Life insurance for vapers in the UK

Life insurance is an important thing to think about – regardless of where you are in your life. It is especially important, however, if you have loved ones who would need to be taken care of in the unlikely (and unfortunate) event that something were to happen to you.

If you vape, then you’re probably excited about the fact that you no longer smoke – which means that your life insurance policy should be cheaper than that of a smoker, right?

Unfortunately, this question is a bit more complicated once you begin to get into the details.

In this blog post, we’re going to look at the good news and the bad news as it pertains to vaping and life insurance in the UK.

The bad news

According to an article that was written by Felicity Hannah and published on gocompare.com, vaping often isn’t different enough from smoking to qualify you for better rates – despite the fact that you’re technically a non-smoker.

Yes, E-cigs have been getting some excellent attention lately from Public Health England (and most of the rest of the health sector as well), but there are still some hurdles to jump through on the life insurance front. One issue is the inability of a medical provider to differentiate between vaping and smoking in any sort of a test. Yes, you can get a nicotine test – but how is your doctor going to know if you’ve been smoking or vaping?

Plus, when E-cigs were first introduced, they were advertised as a smoking cessation product – which meant that most of the people using them had probably also been smoking within the last 12 months anyway.

But the landscape is also changing a lot as time goes on. At the moment, a lot of insurers still have a blanket-approach to vaping, and don’t really draw a line between smoking and the use of electronic devices for nicotine delivery.

In such circumstances, whether you smoke or vape, you’re going to pay for it – no questions asked.

The good news

The good news is that these policies are slowly changing. Waterway Financial Group, for example (U.S. company), CURA (UK company) , is now treating vapers as smoke-free individuals – which is quite a step in a good direction for vapers! Not all insurance providers are on board – but this just goes to show that times are changing a bit for vapers in the UK. After a lot of fears about the TPD, things are starting to look up for the proud E-cig users of England and Wales – and it’s actually a very good thing.

Here’s a quote from the Waterway Financial Group’s website, taken from waterwayfinancialgroup.com.

“Vaping and life insurance qualifications have changed: you can now apply for a non-smoker rating (and cut your premiums in half!)”

Now, we aren’t necessarily insurance specialists here. We might know a thing or two about E-cigs – but for the fine-print on this information, you’ll have to contact the insurance company.

However, the fact remains that even insurance companies (who are downright paranoid, let’s be honest) are warming up to the idea of treating smoking differently.

What should you do?

If you’re thinking about buying health insurance, or are looking for some different rates and want to take advantage of your new smoke-free status as a vaper, then you should consider contacting your life insurance provider and asking them if they treat vapers as smoke-free individuals, or if they charge them extra smoker’s fees (just like they do for smokers).

If they don’t provide you with a smoke-free rate, then you might want to consider shopping around. Every company has a different policy, and it’s very possible that you could find a much better deal on life insurance premiums by switching to a more vaping-friendly company.

Plus, this would help to send a message about vapers as a whole, and would start letting businesses know that we’re not going to stand for being treated exactly like smokers when so much evidence exists to say otherwise.

About The Author

NicoleIt's my passion to do the research about familiar to me topics, especially when it comes to electronic cigarettes and the whole vaping industry as such. I hope you will find my content useful and when / if you do - please do share it! I will appreciate it! :) See our ''Who We Are'' page to find out more about me and my colleagues. Thanks and I look forward to your comments and feedback.

One Response to Life insurance for vapers in the UK

An excellent article, but what would make it so much better is links to insurance companies who provide cover for vapers (as non-smokers), perhaps on a referral scheme so you could get a kickback for your research.